


Leitmotiv

by Artabria



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: A crack theory about Tom Bombadil origins started this, F/M, Gandalf's plan in the Hobbit had more holes than a swiss cheese and that's canon, Goldberry confirmed as maia for this fic, Immortal protagonist (kind of), Modern Girl in Middle Earth, Playing with the idea of the Seventh Age, Rating May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-04 02:03:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21189746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artabria/pseuds/Artabria
Summary: [ENGLISH] The only exciting thing that was supposed to happen that year, she thought, was her graduation. However, fate decided to trap her in Middle-earth, a world that should not exist.At least, the first person she meets speaks a language she understands, even if no one else does. It's something, right?





	Leitmotiv

**Author's Note:**

> If you have read my Solas/OC fic, Through the Looking-Glass, you may notice that hey, this OC is also Galician and named Iria! That's because this fic was never supposed to be translated from Spanish and posted here.

Iria took another picture of the barrow. Creating a shadow with her hand, the young woman in her twenties checked the photo on the small screen of the camera. England had the reputation of being a region where it always rained and where the sun was permanently hidden by clouds, but today the sun was looking radiant in the morning sky and the reflection of the light on the screen was resulting to be quite annoying .

Easter holidays were proving to be quite profitable since they start. Her first stop had been Stonehenge, in Scotland, plus a quick visit to some nearby castles. Right now she was visiting Belas Knap, a long-barrow that had been incredibly well preserved since its construction in the Neolithic.

Although, unlike the Galician _ mámoas _ and thanks to a lower acidity of the soil, the British tombs still contained their former residentes when they were reopened.

Satisfied with her photo, Iria put her camera away in her backpack and continued on her way along the barrow, heading towards its false entrance. Seren, a friend from the fencing club she was attending while in Wales, had already gone to the car, but she wanted to take some more photos before continuing on their way to where the tournament was taking place tomorrow.

She was quite nervous, if she had to be sincere. She wasn't bad with a longsword, but she was far better with a rapier. The problem was that her fencing style with a rapier was the Spanish Verdadera Destreza, but so far everyone she had trained with didn't use that style and she wasn't used to it. She had trained a lot during these last months in the Erasmus program, but this tournament was going to be her first tournament in another country and the fire test for what she had learned.

Iria took the camera out of the backpack again and lifted it to take another photo. Not even five seconds later, she was putting her camera down. Her eyes widened when she saw that the supposedly false door of the barrow had disappeared and now it looked just like one of the several real openings that dotted the monument.

_ This is ridiculous _ , she thought, approaching the black opening framed by the tomb, _ it is supposed to be only a bunch of half-buried stones to deceive potential thieves. _

Iria frowned. It looked like someone had entered the tomb and was now entoning what appeared to be a song, although she couldn't understand the language.

“Hello,” called Iria in English. “Excuse me, but I don't think we can go inside.”

All she received for an answer was an ice-cold hand closing around her wrist with an enormous force, dragging her into the darkness. A pair of ice blue eyes that seemed to glow in the dark watched her impassively as she pulled away from the person holding her. The opening to the outside closed without making the slightest noise, although the darkness did not last long.

The hand around her wrist disappeared with a laugh that froze the blood in her veins. Around her, the walls of the tomb seemed to be illuminated by a dim greenish light, revealing a long stone corridor. The light did not illuminate much, just enough not to stumble. As she walked down the corridor that she was sure did not exist inside Belas Knap, Iria tried not to thing about her Spanish literature teacher commenting on the relationship between green and death in Lorca's work.

That laugh again, this time with a second voice singing that song. The young woman could not help but jump when she saw several shadow move around the corner of her eye. Letting go of a curse, Iria began to run. Whoever this people were, they were playing a cat and mouse game with her, and she didn't like a bit which role she had been cast in.

There, in front of her, it looked like the corridor widened. Iria ran faster. If she was lucky, there would be more room to maneuver and a stone somewhere that she could throw towards the face of her attackers. A stone may not be the best weapon, but if she managed to aim right, she could leave them dizzy enough to ran away and find her way out. Although her hunters had once again covered the door through which she had entered, it wasn't the only existing entrance.

None of the other entrances had a wall of stone cover-

Iria's thoughts were interrupted the moment she stepped into the room where the greenish light was most intense. There were no stones, but there was an impressive collection of golden jewels and precious stones that surrounded five altars made of stone. She heard the footsteps of her approaching pursuers; they weren't even bothering to run. Iria's eyes searching quickly among the objects gathered in front of her for something she could use as a weapon. Letting out a happy sound, the young woman noticed the weapons resting against one of the altars.

There were daggers and swords to choose from, but she didn't think twice about grabbing an unsheathed longsword.

“Fuck!”

She couldn't help her exclamation as soon as she saw the sword up close. With a incredulous look in her face, Iria brough the blade close to her face. It was sharp. The fucking sword was sharp. Who the hell were these people? Iria heard the sound of footsteps stop right behind her and she quickly turned to face her captor, placing her newly acquired sword at her hip and pointing towards the cold eyes that looked at her from the room's entrance.

Even with the increased lighting provided by the light of what she suspected was a funeral chamber, Iria was not able to distinguish much of the person in front of her. Because of his height and size, he seemed to be a man, but she couldn't tell much more. With an almost mocking gesture, the man also raised his own sword.

Iria readied herself. She had never faced before an opponent that was actually trying to kill her. Or that didn't stop singing. She hated that song, every time she heard it the coldness of the grave would bit deeper and deeper into her bones and the air in her lungs would freeze.

With a movement of her arms and a step forward, Iria stopped the downward cut of her attacker. Her muscles followed the path that was more familiar to them and, without thinking much about it, Iria continued the movement with a light turn of her wrists to lower her opponents sword and strike him in the neck.

The man fell to the ground.

“No, no, no, no” Iria started to babble. Cursed muscle memory. She was too used to blunt swords and opponents full of protections. She hadn't meant to kill anyone!

The fear she had felt for having killed someone quickly morphed into horror when the blue eyes of the dead man opened again. In answer, hers filled with renewed terror at the sight of the man trying to rise from the ground with a head attached to a half-cut neck.

The young woman had no qualms about starting to scream for help from anyone who could hear her outside the grave. With horror, she watched as the figure managed to rise from the ground. Had this been a movie, this would have been the moment where she would have started to laugh at the zombie that couldn't get his head straight on what was left of his neck.

It was then, when the zombie decided to simply grab a dagger with one hand and his head with another, when Iria began to hear a song on the other side of the stone wall.

“Hey! Whoever is out there, get me out of here” Iria shouted in despair. “I'm locked up with a-”

The song, in the same mysterious language that the zombie had used, rose in volume and she felt as if the room was shaking as when there was a earthquake. In front of her, a long door-shaped opening began to appear, illuminating the room with a warm light coming from outside.

The song didn't stop, and the zombie that had tried to kill her began to scream when the opening widened and the sun's rays reached her body. The room suffered another tremor and Iria had to dodge a pair of rocks the size of her head that fell from the ceiling of the chamber. Without hesitation, Iria hurried out through the opening in the wall that was just the right size for one person.

She took some steps outside the grave, breathing deeply the fresh air from outside and letting the heat of the sun warm her bones, numbed by the coldness of that cursed song. She was happy to have come out of that encounter alive. However, she soon realized that she no longer was in Belas Knap. The landscape surrounding her did not resemble the burial site at all. For starters, there were none of the informative signs for tourists.

What there was, Iria noticed when she turned to observe the barrow, was a strange man singing a little song while he took the gold from the burial chamber and placing all of it in a pile by the tomb. He was wearing a long blue jacket, the exact same colour as his hat, and a pair of big yellow boots. He had a long brown beard that came down to his waist. His lips formed a big smile when he saw her watching him.

“Truth be told,” said the strange man. He spoke in English, but it sounded as if he had not used the language in quite some time. “Tom had not expected to encounter anything of this when he went for a walk this morning. Quite a surprise!”

Without letting go of his smile, the man handed her the sword she had used against the zombie. It was stained with blood, dripping, but Iria had no problem grabbing it and mentally ready herself for another fight if necessary.

“It was quite different for me,” the man continued with a laugh. “Back then, there was nothing here.”

“Who are you? And what was that thing”

“Our good friend, the barrow-wight won't bother us anymore,” he commented casually, gesturing towards the gold. “The treasure will spread through these lands and its spell will be broken.”

“Who are you?!” demanded Iria, more and more nervous by each moment.

“Me? I'm Tom Bombadil and, like you, I can never go back.”

Tom Bombadil? She knew that name. She had read it once, a long time ago, among the remaining fragments of the text known as the Red Book of Westmarch. This had to be a bad joke.

That story was pure mythology.


End file.
